The essays in this series were written during the summer of 2024, and may not fully address rapidly escalating violence in the region.

The prison resistance and political captivity of Palestinians is embedded in the broader context of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism. Since the Nakba in 1948, when over 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly displaced from their lands, the Israeli state has continuously subjected Palestinians to violence and dispossession as part of the ongoing settler-colonial project aimed at uprooting them from their homeland (Wolfe 2006). Israeli settler colonialism perpetuates systematic injustice leading to long-term suffering and the deprivation of Palestinian rights (Said 1995).

The prison system is central to Israel’s colonial repression (Nashif 2008). Incarceration is a defining feature of the settler-colonial project in that the Israeli state functions as a carceral state employing tactics such as settlement, segregation walls, and extensive prison infrastructure to confine and dominate Palestinians (Khalidi 2014). Prisons are a microcosm of the broader system of segregated Palestinian lands, and the conditions of the prisoners reflect the segregation, control, and isolation experienced by the wider Palestinian population. Since 1967 over eight hundred thousand Palestinians have been arrested with thousands still detained under harsh conditions. A significant aspect of Israeli repression is the use of administrative detention, a policy through which Palestinian detainees are held without charge or trial for unidentified reasons based on undisclosed “secret files.”

In my recent book, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body, I highlight how Palestinian detainees described administrative detentions as “a crime against humanity” and a tool of control over their future, experienced as a form of dispossession. I explain that colonial violence and torture extends beyond physical incarceration and impacts the psyche of the captive body. In response, Palestinian detainees have engaged in numerous hunger strikes to protest against administrative detention and to reclaim their freedom. Palestinian prisoners have long used this form of resistance which embeds steadfastness (sumud) and symbolizes the broader Palestinian struggle against Israeli violence.

Prolonged hunger strikes become a means for Palestinian political prisoners to express their own philosophy of freedom and resistance through the use of their bodies. Rooted in feminist ethnography, the book draws on eighty-five in-depth ethnographic interviews I conducted between 2015 and 2018 with former Palestinian hunger strikers after their release. These interviews, mainly facilitated by the social support organization, the Prisoner’s Club, reveal that the struggle to recover from dispossession of dignity was a key motive for the hunger strikes.

As one of the former hunger strikers from the West Bank summed it up, “The main motive of our hunger strikes as a form of resistance is to reject dehumanization.” The former hunger striker Khader Adnan used the slogan: “my dignity is more precious than food.” He died following his open-ended hunger strike for 78 days to protest his administrative detentions.

The interviews with men and women Palestinian hunger strikers reveal how Israeli Prison Authorities (IPA) use gender and sexuality as tools of control (Abdo 2011, 2014). The Israeli jailer exploits women’s bodies as symbol of “honor” to threaten and control Palestinian communities. The testimony of a woman prisoner highlights the IPA’s use of gendered repression techniques based on orientalist stereotypes of Palestinian culture. She recounts the psychological and physical abuse faced during solitary confinement in a cell which she described as “like a grave” with broken glass on the floor. This was a tactic to manipulate her mental state. She was asked if she had considered suicide.

On the twelfth day of the strike they told me, “We are going to take you to the hospital.” The physician asked me, “Why are you on a hunger strike”? I replied that I want to go back home to my children because the administrative detention is a big lie; there is no reason for my imprisonment. Then the doctor asked me: “Did you think to commit suicide?” I told him that I now understand the reason [for] the broken glass on my cell floor. “You are trying to smash my reputation by claiming that Palestinian female prisoners are… on a hunger strike because they despair.” I understood from his questions that he is a psychiatrist and trying to extract information about my life so as [to] write a report saying that I am insane. I told him you are not a doctor but mukhabarat—a member of the intelligence centre.

These methods weaponize Palestinian women’s bodies to control and dehumanize them. Women’s resistance in particular subverts colonial domination and transform perceptions of Palestinian women’s bodies. However, both women and men resist through hunger strikes challenging these oppressive techniques.

Torture and dispossession have been consistent practices of Zionist colonialism since the 1948 Nakba. The Israeli authorities have employed both traditional physical torture and “modern” methods of torture that leave no marks. In Consciousness Molded: or The Re-Identification of Palestinian Torture (2010), Walid Daqqa highlights these older techniques and shows how the Israeli regime has “innovated” the system of torture.

However, the current genocide marks an unprecedented period of violence against Palestinians in the increased level of torture inflicted on Palestinian prisoners and the intensified detention campaigns. Administrative detentions have risen to the highest level ever recorded. At least 4,000 Palestinians have been arrested in Gaza while over 9,700 arrests have been affected in the West Bank including more than 330 women and 670 children. Overall, the total number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons at this moment exceeds 9,700 including 3,380 administrative detentions. A number of those under administrative detention were women students like Layan Kayed, who a UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found were arbitrarily detained.

Since October 7, the situation of Palestinian political prisoners has worsened significantly, with intensified repression through beatings, torture, starvation and sexual assaults resulting in numerous injuries and death. The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) and various prisoners’ rights institutions have documented severe abuses. These include extended use of tight handcuffing leading to amputations for some detainees due to restricted blood flow and nerve damage. The Israeli prison system also employs sexual torture against detainees, who are subjected to rape, sexual harassment, and strip search (see B’Tselem’s report “Welcome to Hell: Systematic torture and Abuse in Israeli Prisons”).

The Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) has reported a significant rise in torture leading to death among Gaza detainees, including Dr. Adnan Al-Bursh and Dr. Iyad Rantisi. Many families remain unaware of the condition of their detained relatives. Recent lawyers’ visits to Gaza detainees at Sde Teiman camp have uncovered that dogs were used to attack political prisoners. In a similar fashion the Israeli army has used dogs to assault Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

Despite the extreme repression, Palestinian prisoners remain hopeful for freedom. The last prisoner exchange deal in 2011 known as the Shalit Deal liberated 1,027 prisoners, and the recent capture of Israeli soldiers renewed hopes for another exchange deal. On November 24, 2023, a truce led to the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners, including 71 women prisoners and 169 children.

However, broader negotiations for halting the genocide and reaching further exchange deals have stalled due to Israel’s reluctance to free more Palestinian political prisoners. The current genocidal war has brought unprecedented suffering to Palestinian political prisoners which reflects the broader violence of Israeli settler-colonial project. Nevertheless, the hope for freedom continues to drive Palestinian resistance and the Palestinian struggle for liberation.